The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Vale Ltd. has temporarily suspended operations at its five Sudbury mines as the company steps back, pauses and focuses on a plan to make its operations safer after an experienced miner was killed Sunday at Coleman Mine.
Kelly Strong, vice-president of mining and milling for Vale, said 1,550 miners are off the job, with pay, while Vale managers meet with the joint health and safety committee to devise an action plan before the mines are reopened.
Until that plan is drafted, Strong couldn’t predict when the mines would reopen. It’s the first time in the 11 years he has been with Vale that it has suspended operations at all mines after a fatality at one of them, he said.
Vale employs 400 production and maintenance workers at its Coleman and Stobie mines, 350 at Creighton Mine, and 200 at each of Garson and Copper Cliff mines.
Monday night, Greater Sudbury Police identified Stephen Perry, 47, as the miner who was killed.
Rick Bertrand, president of United Steelworkers Local 6500, said he believed Perry lived alone and has a daughter.
Strong described the Steelworker killed as “skilled and experienced and highly respected by his fellow employees.
“His loss will be felt deeply at Coleman Mine, across other mines and in all of our operations,” Strong told a news conference Monday morning at the Copper Cliff Club.
“This is a devastating loss, and our thoughts and prayers go out to the families, friends and the coworkers of this employee. We send our deepest and sincere sympathies to all of them,” said Strong.
Vale will conduct an investigation into the fatality. Greater Sudbury Police Service has been on the scene in Levack on behalf of the coroner’s office.
Three Ministry of Labour employees have been at the site at the 4,215-foot level of the Coleman shaft at the mine.
USW Local 6500’s executive met Monday morning to discuss its investigation.
When asked if Vale would work with the union on a joint investigation, Strong said, “absolutely. That’s certainly our hope and our intention.”
There was a difference of opinion last year between the company and the union about how to handle the investigation into the deaths of two miners at Stobie on June 8, 2011.
Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, were killed after 350 tons of muck and sand overcame them while they were working at the 3,000-foot level of the mine near the No. 7 ore pass.
Just last week, Vale held a news conference to announce its investigation had produced more than 30 recommendations to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
USW Local 6500 has been conducting its own investigation into the Stobie deaths — the first time the union and the company, formerly Inco Ltd., haven’t conducted a joint investigation.
Strong presented two scenarios last week about how Chenier and Fram had died, but said it was still not clear exactly what happened.
Local 6500 president Rick Bertrand said his union is near completing its investigation into the Stobie deaths. A different team from the union will investigate the Coleman miner’s death.
Strong said Vale’s efforts at Coleman Mine are “focused on supporting the family and our employees as best we can, and I’m concentrating our efforts on understanding exactly what occurred so we can put measures in place to prevent similar events from occurring in the future.”
Strong said the two fatal accidents were very different.
A critical incident stress management team is at Coleman Mine and is available to help Vale employees, unionized or non-union.
For now, only a few senior employees are onsite as Vale’s mines are on care-and-maintenance.
In November, rival miner Xstrata Nickel halted production in Sudbury to take what it called safety pauses at two mines, to reverse increasing injury rates.
Marc Boissoneault, vice-president of Xstrata Nickel’s Sudbury operations, said the decision to send home employees at Fraser and Nickel Rim South mines was “abrupt,” but necessary to uphold his company’s first value, health and safety above all.
The injuries weren’t severe, but Boissoneault said “before we get to that point, we have to reverse this trend.”
Nickel Belt New Democrat MPP France Gelinas issued a statement Monday expressing condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the miner killed at Coleman, saying she would closely follow the Labour ministry’s investigation.